Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, neighborhood heroine

I love Mrs Piggle-Wiggle. I wish she lived in my neighborhood.

• She loves kids; "..she enjoys talking to them and best of all, they don't irritate her".
• Mothers all over town call her when there's a problem with their little darlings that they can't fix on their own. Like a bad case of Whisper-itis, or a child who has become a Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker or a Tattletale.
• She has the perfect cure for the Never-wanna-go-to-bedders as well as the Never-Want-To-Go-To-Schooler.

Sometimes her cures are magical: a mysterious powder that causes the Heedless Breaker to float gracefully through her daily routine, giving her plenty of time to avoid needless mishap. But often they are simply a mix of common sense and tricksy-ness that every mom dreams of.

I remember loving these books as a child and am pleasantly surprised to find that as an adult they have lost none of their charm. My daughter loves them too, and as an added bonus, they have provoked some stimulating conversation about why certain behaviors are unacceptable (The Interrupters), unhealthy (Won't Take A Bath Cure: my personal favorite– it involves radishes), or unkind (The Bully). We discuss the pros and cons of letting the Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker eat his food off of successively smaller and smaller plates until he's only eating half a cornflake and two drops of milk for breakfast and is too weak to participate in fun neighborhood activities. Would that cure a Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker in real life?

Sofi thinks, yes, it would. Why?

"Consequences, Mom" she says.

Yes! She is listening after all!

I love getting to talk to her about all these "issues" without coming across as lecturing, or scolding. I can relax my role as The Parent for a bit and instead we're just having a friendly conversation about a book we both enjoy. She seems to pick up on the subtleties of Mrs Piggle-Wiggle's methods and when she doesn't "get it", I'll explain that when a young man is chronically destroying things, sometimes the best way to teach him not to do so is to hand him some tools and show him how to put back together everything he takes apart– and voila! a mechanic is born. Good stuff, good stuff.

Yesterday she told me, "I bet you wish Mrs Piggle-Wiggle lived around here so you could ask her for a Thumb-Sucker Cure!" (she's six and still sucks her thumb, I know, I've failed as a mother)

Yes, sweetie, yes I do.

Or if any of you have her number, I could give her a call and ask…?

NOTE: As a disclaimer, let me say that the tv series (very loosely) based on the original book series is total trash does not live up to the original.

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Elisa reads, writes, crafts, brags about her babies and occasionally waxes eloquent about life and other important things at her blog, Herb of Grace.

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